Latvia's 2028 E-Invoice Mandate: What Your Company Must Do, and When

"We'll look at the e-invoice thing later" is the default position of Latvian companies right now. The deadline sounds far away, but for most companies the work is not a two-week job.

TLDR: from 1 January 2028, every invoice between Latvian companies must be a structured XML file, and its data must be reported to the State Revenue Service (VID). The law is passed, and the only choice left is to prepare calmly or to do everything in December 2027 in a panic.

The deadlines

These dates come from the Accounting Law amendments the Saeima passed on 5 June 2025, which also moved the mandatory B2B phase from 2026 to 2028:

• Since 1 January 2025, invoices to state and municipal institutions (B2G) must be structured e-invoices.
• From 1 January 2026, B2G and G2G invoice data must be reported to VID.
• From 30 March 2026, e-invoices can be used voluntarily in B2B transactions, including submitting the data to VID.
• From 1 January 2028, structured e-invoices and VID data reporting are mandatory for all B2B transactions between companies registered in Latvia.

The format is the same in every phase: XML following the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 standard, based on the European e-invoicing standard EN 16931.

What is and is not an e-invoice

The PDF you export from your invoicing tool and send by email is not an e-invoice, and neither is a scanned paper invoice. An e-invoice is a data file: seller, buyer, line items, amounts, VAT, all in a fixed structure that the receiver's system books without retyping.

I build systems that do exactly this retyping instead of people: they read a PDF or a photo, extract the data, and enter it into the accounting system. What the state now demands is what sensible companies already do voluntarily, because retyping costs hours and creates mistakes; from 2028 it stops being optional.

The three paths to e-invoicing

Every company will end up on one of three paths, depending on invoice volume and the age of its system.

1. The e-address: free, but manual

The state channel is the e-address (e-adrese) on the Latvija.lv platform. It is free, and for ten invoices a month it is enough: invoices can be issued and received right in the portal, in 2028 and after it. The weakness of this path is volume: every step is manual, and what works for ten invoices does not work for a hundred.

2. An operator: a paid channel that runs itself

E-invoice operators (in Latvia, for example, Unifiedpost, Telema, Omniva) run Peppol access points and connect your system to your counterparties' systems. Invoices leave and arrive automatically, and the operator is responsible for format and delivery. It costs money, but above a few dozen invoices a month it is usually cheaper than the human time spent handling invoices by hand.

3. Your accounting system, or a custom integration

The major Latvian accounting platforms either ship e-invoice support already or are building it now. When I researched Horizon's integration options for a client project, I found that recent versions import Peppol XML files natively, with no extra programming: you hand the system the right file and the accountant keeps the approval step. Visma is preparing the same for Jumis users. If your system is maintained, a large part of the work has already been done for you.

In a company with an old or self-built system the XML will not appear by itself: 2026 and 2027 are the window for integration work, connecting the existing system to an operator or the e-address and automating the flow to VID. The job is well defined and clearly priced, but at the end of 2027 everyone will be standing in the same queue.

What to do now: five questions

In my own company the books run automatically, and that is exactly how I know you do not get there in a day. These five questions show the size of the job:

1. Where are your outgoing invoices created? Accounting system, Excel, an invoicing tool, or self-built software? Every one of those sources must be able to produce Peppol XML in 2028.
2. Where do your incoming invoices arrive? Email PDFs, paper, an operator? Receiving needs a channel too.
3. Is your accounting system still updated? Ask your vendor directly: "how will mandatory e-invoices work in your system from 2028?" If they cannot answer concretely, plan as if the support will not arrive in time.
4. What does your accountant say? If your bookkeeping is outsourced, the transition has to fit their process. The best outsourced accountants will plan the switch for their clients themselves; the worst will stay quiet about it until autumn 2027.
5. What stays outside the standard flow? Receipts, foreign supplier invoices, photos from phones. The law will not turn those into structured files, and that is where automation pays off regardless of the mandate.

Who has to move first

If you send ten invoices a month from a maintained standard system, a calm transition in 2027 will do. But there are three situations where waiting is expensive:

• A self-built or aging system. Integration work takes time, and developer capacity in 2027 will be sold out.
• High invoice volume. More invoices means more processes to rebuild and more people to retrain. The voluntary phase from March 2026 exists precisely for you.
• Outsourced accounting firms. If you serve dozens of clients, you make the transition not once but once per client. The firms that plan the migration as a project will work calmly in 2028; the firms that let it drift will be retyping invoices at night in December.

Do it early or pay more

The e-invoice transition is a rare case of the state using a law to force a cleanup that was worth doing anyway. Companies that do it in 2026 will enter 2028 with an automated invoice flow and cheaper bookkeeping, while the rest will pay the urgency price for the same work.

If your invoice flow lives in an old or self-built system nobody wants to touch anymore, this is exactly the problem I solve: I connect the existing system to the e-invoice flow and automate what people have been retyping. Fixed price, fixed deadline, and the first step is a 30-minute conversation about your process. Write to ivarberg@lightsourcegames.com or book a call here: calendar.app.google/bn9uzMB6Fh3Vt8SB6.